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Welcome to my practice! 

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I hope you find what you need here to support you. I work closely with a number of highly skilled, insightful, and profoundly caring practitioners to offer what we aim to be some of the best integrative wellness and health care available in the Bay Area. And know too that we are always happy to refer out if there is a better fit for you elsewhere. 

 

I have been a somatic therapist and professional counselor providing

individual, couples, family, and group therapy since 1991, and BREEMA since 1998.

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As a clinician, I practice integrative, somatic, holistic, and  behavioral therapy, tailored to meet the needs of each client and context. I am adept with a number of theoretical orientations and modalities, and  work comprehensively with a myriad of issues- emotional, psychological, relational, and situational: 

 

• Trauma & PTSD

• Attachment issues & relational dynamics

• Stress, motivation, anxiety & depression

• Substance abuse & addiction issues

• Transition/adjustment issues/grief & loss

• Identity and identification

• Existential crisis-meaning and purpose of life

• Self-esteem/embodiment

• Generational legacies

• Situational /circumstantial short term crisis & problem solving

• Relationship issues and imbalances

 

What I've discovered  from many years as a clinician and from seeing thousands of people in therapy, is that we are fundamentally whole in nature, and have incurred as the result of living on planet Earth some basic misunderstanding regarding who we are, how we work, how life works, our purpose and meaning for being here, and how to participate most fullfillingly in life. This is a good reason to seek therapy. Each individual will have their own path and process for finding the answers they need. Most are pretty simple, yet not often easy. This is where therapy can help.

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Treating people with co-occurring mental health & emotional imbalances, addictions, relationship issues, behavioral health issues, codependency and generational legacies of trauma has been the primary focus of my work for the past 25 years, as well as incorporating wellness practices via the body-mind connection into the healing process. Treating these issues at the root, has meant treating trauma. Treating trauma effectively means including the body in therapy. Facilitating connection between body and mind, moving toward greater receptivity, agency, understanding, and an experience of  wholeness, is the emphasis of my work and treatment philosophy. 

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BREEMA 's body based wisdom, philosophy, principles, and practical approach to living have proven to be the 'golden mean' of my own life, make such simple, good, common sense, as well as having been tried and truly beneficial to my clients over so many years, that they are both backbone and foundation of my clinical practice. 

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           " Don't fight sickness, nurture vitality,

                                                     then let vitality take care of the sickness."

                                                                   from Breema: Essence of Harmonious Life, by Jon Schreiber

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This basic tenant of Breema expresses an underlying understanding that every aspect of life is inherently connected to a bigger picture~ every cell connected to and included in a larger body, and that all imbalance and disharmony can be addressed by understanding what is vital and supporting that. This is where we will begin in our work together.

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I trained in Breema at the Breema Center in Oakland,  Gestalt, Body-Centered, and Somatic Therapy at Esalen Institute, EMDR with Philip Mansfield at JFK University, Psychodynamic and Counseling Psychology at Berkeley’s Wright Institute, and group therapy at both Esalen Institute  and at the New Bridge Foundation. I've trained and worked for many years in both inpatient and outpatient behavioral health facilities, and several private practice settings.​

                                 

Formerly a program director at the New Bridge Foundation’s residential behavioral health treatment program in Berkeley, CA,  and a primary therapist at Bayside Marin’s behavioral health treatment program in San Rafael, CA, I incorporated somatic therapy, BREEMA principles, and body centered meditation into the group therapy treatment curriculum with great success; working primarily with active duty veterans, young adults and their families, couples, recovering professionals, first responders, formerly incarcerated men and women reclaiming their lives, and clients with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse issues. I also incorporated  these principles into my training and supervision with my staff team at New Bridge. It was here that I discovered the body is as indispensable in the therapeutic process as it is in daily life.

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Currently I am a clinical partner at Greeting Health, an integrative wellness practice at the Breema Clinic in Rockridge.

 

I serve as adjunct faculty at both JFK and CIIS Graduate Psychology programs, teaching and supervising clinical interns in practicum, and I travel internationally a few weeks of each year teaching BREEMA and self-care workshops for therapists, doctors, social workers, nurses, midwives, educators, and other health & healing professionals in Austria, France, England, and Spain.

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I love life, people, the process of transformation and healing, and I look forward to working with you!

Team
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